Goldy

Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions—it could have been an angry Seattle Metropolitan Parks District supporter:

An anonymous individual (or individuals) left a target riddled with bullet holes on the doorstep of the Seattle-King County League Women Voters‘ Capitol Hill office over the recent holiday weekend—a message, the LWV believes, about the state chapter’s support for I-594, which would require background checks for gun sales online and at gun shows. A volunteer for the group found the target over the weekend.

… In a statement, Seattle/King County LWV president Ellen Barton said, “This apparent attempt to intimidate us will not dissuade us from our work. The League of Women Voters will continue to be a forum for dialogue, research and education on gun laws and gun violence, and we look forward to reasonable, robust dialogue in the months ahead.”

Couple of thoughts. First, if you want to persuade voters here that we don’t need mandatory background checks on all gun sales, threatening to shoot them isn’t the best way to do it.

Second, my God, what a crappy shot! I mean, look at that target—it’s all over the place! I shot better targets than that when I was 12 years old. If you’re gonna threaten a bunch of old ladies, the least you could do is use a target from somebody who actually knows how to shoot.

If anything, you’re just encouraging us to come for your guns, now that we know you couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Just sayin’.

The Seattle Times editorial board is attempting to use the endorsement season to send a message to legislators on education. And that message is clear: “We hate teachers!”

5th LD House: Incumbent Rep. Chad Magendanz (R)
Magendanz’s campaign focuses on ways for the state to fulfill the state Supreme Court’s McCleary education-funding order… He is a clear choice over his two Democratic opponents, education activist David Spring and Colin Alexander, who lack Magendanz’s experience.

 

31st LD Senate: Cathy Dahlquist (R) over incumbent Senator Pam Roach (R)
Roach says she voted against a critically important teacher-evaluation bill this year because she was angered by her leadership’s push for the Dream Act. She refused in an editorial board meeting to say whether she supports the Washington Education Association’s costly Initiative 1351, which would require the hiring of thousands of additional teachers, even in upper grades where benefits of lower class size are unclear. Dahlquist takes the responsible position on these issues: yes for reform, no on the WEA’s unfunded mandate.

 

31st LD House: Drew Stokesbary (R) over Mike Sando (D)
Stokesbary’s consistent positions offer a contrast with Democrat Mike Sando, who appears conflicted. A schoolteacher and a member of the Enumclaw City Council, Sando draws inspiration and financial support from the Legislature’s moderate-Democrat faction. Yet as a local teachers’ union president, he supports the Washington Education Association’s budget-busting Initiative 1351, and he cannot suggest where to find the necessary billions. In contrast, Stokesbary deplores the measure and embraces education-reform measures.

 

33rd LD Senate: Incumbent Senator Karen Keiser (D)
In 2012, [Keiser] supported a bill that would have streamlined health-insurance offerings for teachers and might have saved them money — despite opposition from the Washington Education Association, which benefits from the current system. … While Keiser disappointingly opposed including student test scores in teacher evaluations , neither challenger has the civic résumé or the knowledge required to take on a lawmaker of her stature.

 

33rd LD House: Incumbent Rep. Mia Gregerson (D)
For instance, she told The Times’ editorial board she would have voted for a controversial bill mandating the use of test scores in teacher evaluations — if Democratic-party leaders had allowed it to come to the floor of the House — despite opposition from the state teachers’ union.

 

37th LD House: Daniel Bretzke (R) over incumbent Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D)
While Santos should be focused on the Legislature meeting its court-mandated obligations to fully fund education, she wants to make the challenge worse. She supports Initiative 1351, the teachers union-backed measure that requires class sizes across all grades to be reduced, the hiring of thousands more teachers and building of more classrooms. Yet, there is no funding mechanism in sight.

 

37th LD Senate: Pramila Jayapal (D)
Jayapal should strive for independence on issues that might not always appease the many liberal and labor groups that have endorsed her, including Fuse Washington, four separate SEIU unions and the Washington Education Association. On education, she must remember the Legislature’s top priority is to fix a broken system, not to prop up unfunded mandates.

 

1st LD House: Edward Barton (R) over incumbent Rep. Luis Moscoso (D)
On the critical issue of education, Barton is rightly skeptical of the state Supreme Court’s heavy-handed education-funding mandate, but advocates for additional funding through the so-called levy swap proposal, which has been advanced by some key House Democrats. But his independence contrasts with Moscoso, a two-term Democrat, who indicated he defers to House Democratic leadership on key education funding — the most fundamental issue facing the Legislature. Every elected official needs to be en pointe.

 

32nd LD Senate: Chris Eggen (D) over incumbent Senator Maralyn Chase (D)
[Eggen] is skeptical of the expense and mechanics of Initiative 1351, which would reduce classroom size with no revenue attached. He also understands the need for a workable role for student test scores in teacher evaluations and eligibility for federal funding.

And no, I’m not cherry-picking. Those are all nine legislative endorsements published so far, and the only one that doesn’t implicitly attack teachers, their union, and their interests is the Magendanz endorsement. But in case you’re wondering, yes, Magendanz opposes the WEA-backed class-size reducing I-1351, which is the litmus test of all litmus tests for the Seattle Times: “This seems like it is serving the adults in our education system,” said Magendanz on TVW. And by “adults,” he means “teachers.”

It is also worth noting that the editors have urged voters to toss out three of the five Democratic incumbents as punishment for supporting teachers—endorsing one Democratic and two Republican challengers. The only Republican incumbent they haven’t endorsed is bat-shit-crazy Senator Pam Roach—who refused to state a position on I-1351—and they endorsed another Republican in her stead.

So yes, legislative hopefuls, that was the editorial board’s secret phrase: “No on I-1351.” Congratulations to those of you who passed the test.

Just got the latest signature verification numbers on Forward Seattle’s referendum, and it doesn’t look good for the anti-$15 minimum wage crowd:

Referendum No. 2 (Forward Seattle)

Number of signatures submitted	18,928
Number of signatures reviewed	8,389
Number of signatures verified	6,409

With about 44 percent of the signatures verified, that’s a validation rate of just 76.4 percent, far short of what’s necessary to produce the 16,510 valid signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The first batch of 3,353 signatures validated at 75.5 percent rate, so at first glance the validation rate appears to be trending slightly in Forward Seattle’s favor. But some of this improvement is due to a small number of “signature miscompares” being rehabilitated under review from supervisors, and then folded back into the total, so it’s not really possible to entirely compare validation rates from one batch to another.

And in case you think there’s something fishy about such a low validation rate, think again:

As you can see, the bulk of the rejected signatures are from people who are either not registered to vote, or are registered outside of Seattle. There’s nothing subjective about that. Meanwhile, since the number of duplicate signatures tends to rise exponentially as the sample size increases (for obvious reasons), that number should jump to close to 200 by the time the process is completed.

Given just the numbers above, Forward Seattle would need an impossible 95.8 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. Not gonna happen. But there are also an additional 455 verified signatures out of 567 submitted from a second referendum drive. If these are added to the total (and it’s not clear that they legally can), Forward Seattle would still need a 91.5 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures. Again, not gonna happen. And that’s not even counting the “hundreds” of signature withdrawal affidavits Working Washington collected.

So stick a fork in it, this referendum is done! And it’s not even close: Forward Seattle will fall a couple thousand signatures short of the threshold. There will not be a $15 minimum wage referendum on the November ballot.

 

The Seattle Times has endorsed Republican Edward Barton over two-term Democratic state Representative Luis Moscoso in the 1st Legislative District, and omigod, I don’t even know where to start with this one.

First of all, this is now the second race (that I am aware of) in which the editors have endorsed making the state legislature even whiter. As if that’s possible. By my count there are currently only ten nonwhite members of the 147-member legislature (none in the Republican caucuses, unless we want to go back to counting the Irish).

Moscoso is one of only two Hispanics currently serving in Olympia, while Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos is one of only four Asian Pacific Islanders. The Seattle Times would prefer to replace both of them with middle-aged white guys.

Second, the editors’ pre-House biographical description of Moscoso as simply “a former Community Transit bus driver,” is an absolutely stunning lie omission, even for an editorial board that has raised lies of omission to the highest form of art.

Yes, Moscoso drove a bus. But more significantly he was a union organizer and four-term president of ATU Local 1576. He was the Government Relations Director for the Washington Public Employees Association, and served three terms as Secretary of the Washington State Democratic Party. Moscoso has also served on numerous other boards and committees including the Puget Sound Regional Council and NAACP of Snohomish County, but it is his union organizing and Democratic Party activism that makes up the bulk of his professional resume. And it is also the biographical detail to which the anti-labor editors truly object.

And last, but certainly not least, I have to admit I had trouble falling asleep last night after reading this favorable description of Barton’s education policy:

On the critical issue of education, Barton is rightly skeptical of the state Supreme Court’s heavy-handed education-funding mandate, but advocates for additional funding through the so-called levy swap proposal, which has been advanced by some key House Democrats.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

How many times do I have to explain that the “levy swap” provides no additional funding for education?! It just doesn’t! I’ve laid out in detail how a levy swap would would work. I’ve shown my math. It is an accounting trick, pure and simple, to preposterously claim that a levy swap provides “additional funding” to K-12 education.

To repeat, a levy swap is by design revenue neutral. It merely replaces local levy dollars with state levy dollars—any increase in state school spending is offset by decreasing aggregate local school spending by an equivalent amount. Furthermore, in “property rich” urban and suburban districts like Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond (communities whose interests the Seattle Times allegedly serves), a levy swap would substantially raise our property taxes while providing zero additional funds for our local schools. In fact, a levy swap would actually erode our local K-12 funding over time!

I know folks at the Seattle Times read me—I can see the traffic coming in from nwsource.com.  So there is absolutely no excuse for continuing to perpetuate this lie.

Reading between the lines of the paper’s endorsements this year, the editors have clearly made education reform their overriding priority… if by “reform” you mean busting the teachers union, promoting the Gates/Walmart-backed corporate education agenda, and defying the Supreme Court’s mandate to spend more tax dollars on public schools. I suppose that’s their right. I just wish they had the integrity to be honest about it.

Good on the Seattle Times editorial board for voicing support for US Senator Patty Murray’s efforts to protect reproductive health care from the Supreme Court’s dangerous Hobby Lobby ruling…

Republicans and other Democrats in the Senate and House need to step up to this legislation, and its basic protections. Does anyone really believe that employees surrender their religious beliefs and civic prerogatives to their employers?

Shuffle the demographics, ethnicities and roles a bit, and no doubt the GOP opponents would be outraged by some potential employer-employee scenarios.

Timely and appropriate legislation in Congress restates the history and intent of existing federal laws so it will be clear, even for the nation’s highest court.

Of course, Murray’s bill has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House. So, you know, if they really cared about defending women’s access to reproductive care, perhaps the editors might want to stop endorsing so many goddamn Republicans for Congress? Just sayin’.

1 Corinthians 6:1-4
If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church?

Discuss.

I’ve yet to see the exact numbers, and they don’t appear to be available online, but word is that King County Elections has reviewed about 4,000 of the approximately 19,500 signatures Forward Seattle submitted on their anti-$15 minimum wage petitions, and validated only 75 percent on the first pass. That’s far short of the 84.6 percent rate necessary to produce the 16,500 valid signatures required to qualify a referendum for the ballot.

I’ve no idea if those first 4,000 signatures were a random sample or a contiguous batch of petition sheets, but either way it’s bad news for Forward Seattle, which would now need an 87.1 percent validation rate on the remaining signatures to meet the threshold. That’s not impossible; all of the rates posted above are within the range of past experience. But 87.1 percent would be more of an optimistic outlier than the norm.

And that’s before considering the “hundreds” of signature withdrawals Working Washington tells me they collected.

Considering the lengths Forward Seattle had to go to generate signatures—you know, lying to voters about their petition—a 75 percent validation rate would not be surprising. It takes low standards to run a signature drive this way, and those low standards almost guarantee a degree of sloppiness and cheating.

In other words, you get what you pay for. A maxim the business owners funding Forward Seattle might want to take to heart in reconsidering how they compensate their own low wage workers.

Goldy, January 29, 2010:

[C]ategorizing Freeman’s market philosophy as somewhere to the right of Rich Uncle Pennybags, well, that’s about as speculative as predicting a Seattle Times editorial endorsement. (November, 2012: “Rob McKenna for Governor; a different kind of Republican.” You mark my words.)

The Seattle Times, October 6, 2012:

Rob McKenna is the best candidate to replace Chris Gregoire as governor of Washington. … McKenna has an independent mind. He is willing to work with Democrats and he is willing on occasion to buck his party.

I don’t lay claim to any peculiar powers of prescience. This is just who they are and what they do.

Hate to make HA all Seattle Times-bashing all the time,* but over at PubliCola, Josh deftly highlights how blatantly dishonest the editorial board’s Parks District “No” endorsement is, by dredging up the paper’s “No” endorsements against the previous two parks levies:

Isn’t it weird that … the Seattle Times editorialized this week that voters should reject this year’s permanent parks funding measure because they’d prefer Seattle’s traditional levy renewal funding approach, yet they came out against the last two levy proposals?

(No inconsistency, I guess, but to mangle an old phrase: They were against parks funding before they were against it.)

How can anybody take the Blethenites seriously?

* No I don’t.

Back in 2012, just for kicks, I got myself elected a Rick Santorum delegate from the 37th Legislative District Republican precinct caucus. How’d I manage that? I was the only “Republican” to show up from my precinct. That’s how much of a joke the GOP is in this overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Yet that didn’t stop the Seattle Times editorial board from hopelessly endorsing an unknown Republican against 8-term incumbent Democratic state Representative Sharon Tomiko Santos. I mean, what the fuck?

THE 37th Legislative District’s Position 1 needs a legislator willing to compromise and represent the best interests of a diverse district where many schools are struggling and persistent achievement gaps threaten to leave students behind.

That means turning out the incumbent in favor of the promising political newcomer, Daniel Bretzke of Seattle. The moderate Republican faces an uphill battle against a 16-year legislative veteran, state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, D-Seattle.

If by “uphill battle” they mean running face-first into the base of a sheer vertical cliff, sure.

See, here’s how this thing usually works. The Seattle Times will hold its nose and endorse a Democrat in an uber-Democratic district, because to do otherwise would make them look feckless, impotent, and stoopid. If there’s a competitive race for an open seat, they’ll generally go with the Democrat with the fewest labor endorsements, but otherwise it’s the incumbent. That way the editors can point to their handful of Democratic endorsements in safe Democratic districts as a defense against accusations of partisanship arising from, say, their endorsement of lifelong asshole Drew Stokesbary over his more qualified Democratic opponent in a swingish 31st Legislative District.

So what explains this astounding act of editorial futility?

The Democrat chairs the House Education Committee and is in a position to make a huge difference for kids. Yet, she has repeatedly used her power to stall meaningful education reforms opposed by the teachers union.

While Santos should be focused on the Legislature meeting its court-mandated obligations to fully fund education, she wants to make the challenge worse. She supports Initiative 1351, the teachers union-backed measure that requires class sizes across all grades to be reduced, the hiring of thousands more teachers and building of more classrooms. Yet, there is no funding mechanism in sight.

This past session, Santos ignored Seattle Schools’ plea for a change in the law to include some level of student test scores in teacher evaluations.

I’ve got my own problems with Santos, dating back to her stalwart defense of payday lenders. She refused to support last year’s minimum wage legislation, and she’s long scorned much of the environmental agenda as something that’s more of a concern for rich white people than her own diverse working-class district. She’s actually far less liberal than her district. But I appreciate her work as chair of the Education Committee where she’s been a strong opponent of charter schools and much of the rest of the Gates/Walmart backed corporate education reform agenda.

And that, of course, is what has the editors’s undies so tied up in a knot. They absolutely hate the teachers union, and by association, teachers. And so in their eyes, Santos’ support for “hiring thousands more teachers” is a transgression so unforgivable that they are willing to stake what’s left of their withered reputation on a challenger who I could outpoll with a half-hearted write-in campaign.

It is an oversized gesture of unabashed futility that demonstrates once and for all that when it comes to understanding or representing the values and interests of its citizens, Seattle has, alas, become a no-newspaper town.

Damn you, $15 an hour minimum wage!

Capitol Hill food+drink summer report: 27 bars, restaurants and cafes still to come 2014

If not for the city council’s job-killing, small-business-destroying socialism, it could’ve been 28!* Amirite?

* (But seriously, it sure does seem to be business as usual in Seattle despite the impending $15 minimum wage. Go figure.)

It’s no October Revolution, but kudos to socialist council member Kshama Sawant and her fellow traveler Nick Licata (literally a communist, in that he once lived in a commune) for fighting to make the city’s proposed Metro buyback funding package just a little less regressive.

Sawant and Licata propose replacing the 0.1 cent sales tax increase component of the package with an increase in the Commercial Parking Tax (from 12.5 percent to 17.5 percent), and a modest restoration of the Employee Hours Tax: $16.68 per employee per year, with small businesses exempted. That would cost a Seattle business only $1.39 per employee a month, about 8 cents an hour—hardly the type of burden that would drive jobs out of booming Seattle.

I won’t belabor the details here; Sawant has posted an informative FAQ on her council blog. Go read that. But I will take the opportunity to editorialize.

As I see it, there are two compelling reasons for the council to adopt the Sawant/Licata proposal: 1) It’s more fair; and 2) The resulting tax package would be more likely to pass voters.

On the first point, Washington already has the most regressive tax system in the nation, and by far. This tax swap doesn’t do a lot to reverse that, but at least it doesn’t add to it the way a highly regressive sales tax increase would. About 40 percent of downtown Seattle workers rely on Metro to commute in to work; all Sawant and Licata are doing is asking businesses to pick up a little bit of the cost of maintaining the bus service on which they rely.

On the second point, because the sales tax is so regressive, it is also highly unpopular, which surely contributed to the defeat of the countywide Prop 1 in April. If the Sawant/Licata amendment passes, the council would impose the Employee Hours and Commercial Parking taxes directly. Only the $60 car tab increase would go to Seattle voters in November. Considering how crucial maintaining bus service is to our local economy and the welfare of low and middle income commuters, the council should do whatever it can to best assure passage. Replacing the regressive sales tax component with more progressive alternatives will surely help.

The Sawant/Licata proposal will be debated at today’s Transportation Committee hearing, at 2 p.m., and possibly submitted to a final vote. If you can’t show your support in person, scroll to the bottom of Sawant’s FAQ and email council members. Also, sign this petition.

Were you one of thousands of Seattleites misled by Forward Seattle’s blatantly dishonest signature gatherers, tricked into thinking that their petition was in support of a $15 minimum wage rather than an effort to repeal it? Well if so, there’s still time to take your signature back!

Voters misled by Forward Seattle’s corrupt signature gathering tactics into signing a minimum wage repeal referendum they did not support can actually withdraw their signatures from the minimum wage petition. Signatures must be withdrawn in writing, and they have to be submitted before the close of business tomorrow (Thursday).

[…] Here’s the letter you can submit (PDF): http://bit.ly/withdrawsig

Again, it must be submitted in writing, and has to happen before the close of business.

In order to expedite the process, copies of the letter are available at SEIU 775 in downtown Seattle. If you stop by the SEIU 775 office in downtown Seattle — 215 Columbia St, Seattle, WA 98104 — you can sign the letter to withdraw your signature and we will make sure it gets to the appropriate place. If you want to withdraw your signature, please stop by no later than 3:00 pm THURSDAY (i.e. tomorrow) so we can ensure they get to the right place on time and your signature is successfully withdrawn.

By all accounts, Forward Seattle was just on the cusp of delivering enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Don’t reward them for their dishonesty: withdraw your signature before it’s too late!

UPDATE:

The Seattle Times editorial board (many of whom’s members don’t actually live in Seattle) weighs in on Proposition 1, which would create a Seattle Park District to manage and fund the city’s parks and recreation facilities.

SEATTLE loves its parks, and should have access to beautiful, safe and well-maintained urban green spaces.

Yes we do!

But in the name of good parks, the Seattle City Council is asking voters to give them a blank check, with increased power and weaker oversight.

We just don’t want to pay for them!

Citizens should reject Proposition 1, the Seattle Park District measure. This is not merely a replacement for the existing parks levy, which citizens have generously passed every six years. (Currently, property owners pay about 20 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value per year — or about $88 on a home valued at $440,000.)

It isn’t? Then I suppose in the very next sentence you are going to effectively describe exactly what Proposition 1 is:

As pro-parks community activist Gail Chiarello so effectively describes Proposition 1: “It’s pretending to be a Bambi, when it’s really a Godzilla.”

Um, what? I’m pretty sure that’s a non sequitur.

With the support of Mayor Ed Murray, Proposition 1 proposes a new, permanent taxing authority controlled by the City Council. Collections in 2016 would start at a total of 33 cents per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value (about $145 on a home worth $440,000), but the council could more than double that amount to 75 cents per $1,000, or $330 per year — without ever having to check with voters.

That’s not entirely true. Once the initial levy rate is set, the parks district would be subject to the same absurd one percent annual cap on regular levy revenue growth that Tim Eyman’s Initiative 747 imposes on all taxing districts. It is unclear to me whether the Parks District would be born with banked levy capacity up to the maximum revenue that could have been raised under the 75 cent per $1,000 statutory cap at the time of the initial levy, but even if so, that banked capacity would not grow with property valuations. In fact, since property values generally appreciate at a rate much faster than 1 percent a year, the actual maximum parks district levy rate per mille will inevitably decrease over time without a voter-approved lid lift.

Either the editors are too stupid to understand that, or they are engaging in dishonest scaremongering, pure and simple.

Under state law, this district cannot be dissolved by a public vote. Neither would citizens be able to file initiatives against decisions they disagree with.

Which is true. But citizens already can’t file initiatives against parks decisions now! The mayor proposes and the council amends and adopts parks appropriations through the annual budget process. City appropriations are not subject to initiative or referendum. How the parks department subsequently goes about spending its appropriations is a purely administrative function. Administrative actions are also not subject to initiative or referendum.

Again, either the editors don’t understand the law, or they’re hoping you don’t.

Though a 15-member citizens’ committee would ostensibly provide oversight, the real control is with the City Council. The parks district essentially creates a shadow city government, run by the same Seattle City Council with the same borders as the City of Seattle, but with vast new authority to levy up to about $89 million in new annual taxes on the same Seattle taxpayers.

How is it a “shadow city government” if it is composed entirely of the actual city government? Its meetings and records are open to the public. Its members are directly elected by voters. What is shadowy about that.

In fact, if you read the interlocal agreement that is part of the formation of the Parks District, nothing at all changes about the way decisions are actually made. The city will continue to own the parks. The mayor will continue to propose parks budgets. The council will continue to amend and approve parks budgets (before passing it on to itself in the guise of the Parks District for a pro forma vote). And the city’s parks department will continue to operate the parks on behalf of the district. Other than adding a citizens oversight committee, the only thing that substantively changes is the taxing authority. Nothing else.

There are not enough safeguards to stop the council from diverting general funds to other causes, such as sports arenas.

No safeguards except, you know, the ballot, the same safeguard that already stops the council from diverting funds to unpopular causes. These are elected officials. They answer to voters. That’s the safeguard: democracy.

(Also, “sports arenas?” Really? Now they’re just making shit up. In editorial board interviews and other forums, Parks District opponents have gone as far as to raise the specter that a Parks District could build an airstrip at Cal Anderson Park! That’s how stupid these sort of paranoid fantasies are.)

Proponents promise yearly department audits, but only after the measure becomes law.

Because you can’t audit something that doesn’t exist. Duh-uh.

Why wait? The city should conduct a robust, independent performance and financial audit before even attempting to ask voters to trust them and sign a blank check.

The office of the Washington State Auditor conducts annual financial and accountability audits of the city—including the Parks Department—the results of which are all available online. There are no outstanding negative findings regarding parks operations. As for a performance audit, it couldn’t hurt; but neither have the state’s performance audits proven to help all that much either.

Citizens deserve to know how funds have been used so far, and how the city might invest limited parks revenue more wisely.

See, this is really the heart of the disagreement here. The editors believe that parks revenue should be limited, whereas Mayor Murray and the council disagree. All their talk about accountability is bullshit. What they are really arguing for is more austerity.

• According to The Trust for Public Land, Seattle Parks and Recreation is ranked second in the nation for the number of employees per 10,000 residents among the nation’s 100 most populous cities. City spending on parks ranks fourth in the nation. Yet, it faces a daunting maintenance crisis that has left some buildings dilapidated, pools unusable, bathrooms dank and even allowed a broken pump at Green Lake to leak raw sewage.

Shorter Seattle Times: It’s all the fault of those greedy, lazy parks employees!

To be clear, the Parks Department has eliminated 142 positions since 2008, about 10 percent of its workforce. Further, Seattle Parks & Recreations is almost unique in the nation in that it encompasses community centers as well as parks, thus skewing our employee per resident and revenue per resident numbers upwards. Indeed, if you read the TPL report in its proper context (instead of cherry-picking data and deliberately presenting it out of context like the editors do), what you see is Seattle’s parks rankings slipping year over year compared to similar-size cities, do to our lack of investment.

So let’s be honest. One of the reasons the Seattle Times consistently opposes raising taxes (again, taxes many of its non-Seattle-resident editors will never pay) is because they view every funding crisis as an opportunity to punish unionized public employees. Not enough money to meet our paramount duty to amply fund public schools? Fire teachers, cut their pay, and break their unions! Sales tax revenue shortfall threatening 600,000 hours of Metro bus service? Fire bus drivers, cut their pay, and break their unions! Initiative 747’s ridiculous 1 percent cap on annual regular levy growth strangling the city’s ability to pay for parks and other public services? Fire workers, cut their pay, and break their unions!

• Despite campaign rhetoric calling on voters to invest in fixing parks, Proposition 1 would dedicate only about 58 percent, or $28 million, of revenue in the district’s first year toward chipping away at the city’s $270 million maintenance backlog. Eight percent, or $3 million, would pay for maintaining facilities. More than a quarter of the budget is slated for new programs and expansion.

That’s 58 percent toward addressing the maintenance backlog and 8 percent toward avoiding adding to it. Yes, a big chunk of the remainder goes to “expanding” programs… but only within the context of several years of program cuts. For example, we’re talking about restoring community center hours and routine park maintenance and service that had been cut during budgetary lean years. Over anything longer than a one-year time frame, that’s not an expansion.

As for new programs, the proposed budget would develop and maintain parks at 14 sites the city had previously acquired, but never had the funds to develop. Also a new program: performance monitoring! The editors oppose spending additional money on the exact sort of accountability they insist must be delivered before spending additional money! Imagine that.

Seattle needs to care for current assets before amassing more. It also ought to expand partnerships with nonprofits and private groups willing and ready to help sustain recreation programs.

Or, hell, why not just privatize?

Preserving parks is critical to quality of life and public health.

But paying for it is not.

The mayor and council members are understandably eager to create dedicated parks funding and free up room in limited levy capacity for other worthy programs, such as universal preschool. But they have failed to make a case for a Seattle Park District that gives elected officials so much additional, unfettered power to tax and spend.

Again, bullshit. The power isn’t unfettered and there’s zero loss of accountability. What the editors are really opposed to is “free[ing] up room in limited levy capacity for other worthy programs, such as universal preschool.” They want to drown city government in a bathtub.

By rejecting Proposition 1, voters send a strong message to city leadership: We love parks, but return with a levy or alternate measure that prioritizes park needs, holds officials more accountable and preserves citizen participation.

Actually, it would send the opposite and most obvious message: that we don’t love our parks. And they know that. But the anti-tax/anti-government/anti-Seattle editors just couldn’t give a shit.

Let’s be 100 percent clear: For all the over-the-top vilification, the proposed Seattle Municipal Parks District is little more than an accounting maneuver. For a hundred years, this latent taxing authority has been left untapped because a prosperous Seattle didn’t need it. But I-747’s ridiculous 1 percent cap (less than inflation let alone population-plus!) has left the city unable to grow revenues commensurate with its needs.

A parks district would provide a stable and adequate alternative revenue source while freeing up taxing capacity for other crucial services like universal pre-school. And it would leave the parks department just as accountable as it is now, if not more so.

What the Seattle Times is arguing for is what its editors always argue for: a slow and steady decline and erosion of the public sector. Tell them to go fuck themselves: Vote “yes.”

The International Franchise Association and its members are shocked, shocked to find that lawyering is going on in here:

The City of Seattle’s decision to hire expensive outside legal counsel to try to defend its discriminatory actions against small businesses in the recently adopted minimum wage ordinance should outrage every taxpaying resident and business, according to Jan Simon, President and CEO of the Washington Lodging Association (WLA).

Last week the City announced it had hired Susman Godfrey, a Texas law firm with offices in Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, to assist in its defense of the ordinance.

“As a Seattle taxpayer I am flabbergasted and disappointed that the Mayor and City Council believe it is appropriate to hire an outside law firm charging a reported $1,100 an hour to defend the blatantly discriminatory sections of the ill-conceived ordinance,” said Simon.

Even worse, adds Simon in the press release, is that some of the money used to pay the city’s legal expenses will come from taxes on the very businesses who have filed this lawsuit! Which is, of course, hilarious.

Well it is true that the IFA lawsuit is laughably frivolous, that still wouldn’t excuse lazy lawyering on the part of the City Attorney’s office. Government agencies hire outside attorneys all the time, particularly to deal with highly specialized areas of the law. So it’s good to know that City Attorney Pete Holmes isn’t too stoned to know that he better seek outside expertise on this one, especially since he’s facing off against evil genius former US Solicitor General Paul Clement.

As for the IFA’s mock outrage, what’s next? Suing the Pike Place Market for refusing to rent to franchises? They can decry Seattle’s $15 minimum wage ordinance as “discriminatory” all they want—and maybe it is—but this sort of discrimination is neither illegal nor immoral. The only thing more laughable than its frivolous lawsuit is the IFA’s efforts to spin this into some sort of a civil rights issue.